


Queen of the Underground

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: F/F, I don't know what universe this is I read SWAN and then I drank a gallon of coffee, Not Canon Compliant, Weirdness, the living dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 23:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14725487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: Like all the things Tess wants, Anne Gwish's attention is expensive and difficult to acquire.An unfortunate adventure.





	Queen of the Underground

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only putting this up because there's not enough content for the ship

The guard at the gate was wearing sunglasses. It was ten o'clock at night.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "it's at capacity. No more tickets."

"Please," Tess said. She was wearing one of the four identical Nine Inch Heels t-shirts she'd bought from the sales rack at the mall and chopped up in a series of miniscule different ways searching for some kind of post-corporate statement. "We'll just hang out at the merch table, we promise."

"We had to take a taxi just to get here," Anne said. Her nostrils flared. "We can't go home now!"

The venue was backed up onto a golf course at the edge of town, a long way from either of their homes. They had been over at Dillon's house, talking about the scene lately, when Dillon had mentioned the sound of a mic test as he drove by it—his windows, as always, rolled down to compensate for the lack of AC—on his way back from the airport where he worked. Nobody had seemed to know who had booked the stadium out at the edge of town. Cleo, who had been drinking Sierra Mist and vodka at the back table, knew almost every single band that passed through, even the dad-rock ones, and she had no idea who or what the _27 Club_ were.

"You don't know what it is?" Anne had said, perched on the arm of the couch, green glass heineken dangling from her long black nails. "Try to keep up, Cleo."

"I know what 27 club _means_ ," Cleo said, "I just don't know who's in the band. They're _nobody_. Look. Nothing."

"It's probably Reignstorm's side project," Anne said. She leaned forward, cleavage flashing above her dress. "Mcleod's been awfully cagey the last couple times I've talked to him."

"Fuckin' _doubt_ it," Dillon had said. "He can barely fill a venue downtown, and the stadium is huge."

Tess watched Anne consider a series of propositions with the careful poise of a judge presiding over a courtroom, egging the argument on each time it threatened to die down again, and she had thought: this is something Anne likes. And then, as if someone else had opened up her mouth and spoken out of it, she had said: "Let's just go find out who it is."

The look on Anne's face as her attention finally fell on Tess—delight, calculation, shrewd interest—made Tess feel ten years old again, holding out the glittering creature she'd snared to the pretty girl on the swing set whose brown curls flashed gold in the sunshine. Her heart fluttered like a butterfly in her child hands. It was too late to back out then.

So here they were, just the two of them together again for the first time in like ever, as Anne gradually got more and more bent out of shape yelling at the bouncer. Tess hung back, unconsciously hovering just outside of the splash zone. At the gate there were posters for old country singers and some pop star's reunion tour, but nothing with tonight's dates, and nothing that seemed to match the sound coming over the wall. From the moment she'd stepped out of the car it had seemed to clutch at her, a bass thump that rattled the pebbles on the sidewalk, a rhythm like it was running to catch up with itself and tripping forward into terror.

She jumped as Anne grabbed her hand, startled by the sudden touch and unnerved by the darkness. "Fine!" Anne said, "the band sounds shitty anyway!"

Tess trotted after her, trying to keep up, until they were well out of sight of the bouncer or the gate. The sound of something like a violin gasped over the top of the wall, setting Tess's teeth on edge. It seemed to keen, more like a wounded animal than an instrument.

Anne skidded to a stop. "Okay," she said, "stand next to the wall. Back up to it."

Tess slowly scooted towards the wall, until Anne impatiently pushed her flat against it and pushed a finger into the concrete right at the top of her head. She glanced up from it like she was measuring. Her black hair flashed green and gold in the street lights. "You're not tall enough," she said. "Shit."

Tess looked from the top of the wall to the marker-finger to Anne, who was scanning the sidewalk. She did not want to hop a fence, and she certainly did not want to get any closer to that keening whine on the other side of the wall, but it had been her idea to come out here and she couldn't afford to back out now. She had no idea how she'd managed to pull off even this much. Anne had hardly said ten words to her in a month of Dillon's Friday night basement parties, despite how much she'd tried to make herself available for conversation. She'd made better progress with _Dillon_ than Anne Gwish, for all that she had no idea how to stop sounding like a dweeb in front of him. What had she come here for if not to catch Anne's attention? What was the point of any of this if she gave up what little gain she'd made now?

"What about the trash can?" Tess said.

Anne peered down the curve of the wall and spotted the trash can, one of the vaguely coffin shaped kind with the ashtray on top. Teeth flashed under her shiny dark lips. "Alright," she said. "Let's try that."

With the can tipped over on its side, Tess was almost able to stand on it and touch the top of the wall. She boosted up Anne, who huffed and puffed and pulled herself up onto the flat top of the wall, and then pulled Tess, who was lighter, up off the trash can after her. From the top of the wall the whole stadium was bathed in lavender light, pulsing and flashing. They lay there for a moment, panting into their elbows, as the whine of the music plunged right through them and dripped down onto the street on the other side. Anne did her best to look like she wasn't winded. The stage was set with what looked like enormous crystals, maybe carved ice, jutting up into the light. Whoever was on stage was howling into a microphone, not without some melody but with—Tess couldn't think of a better way to say it—a brutal kind of mourning. Beside her, Anne sucked in a sudden breath.

"Son of a bitch," Anne said, and the same time that a man's voice from the other side of the wall called, "Hey, is somebody-"

"Jump," Anne whispered, and then she vaulted down onto the grass, landing in a crouch.

Tess broke out in a cold sweat, hesitating for a moment too long between two bad alternatives, thinking of her ankles and her ribs, and then finally rolled off after Anne just after the first beam of a flashlight passed through the darkness beside her. Her wrists screamed as they hit the ground. Her boots broke right through the soft turf.

"How are we going to get back out?" she wheezed.

Anne was already straightening up, brushing off her dirty hands on her jeans. "Same as everyone else," she said. "Through the door."

"But the bouncer—"

"We'll just leave with the crowd. Jeeze." She had turned her attention on the stage, to the howling performer, her eyes narrow with interest. "I feel like I recognize him," she said. "Let's get a closer look."

Hadn't the bouncer said the venue was full? The crowd seemed awfully small to Tess, who had expected a production big enough to account for ice sculptures and a light show to attract at least a couple hundred. It seemed like it was just the enormous thrashing mosh pit, and whoever was up in that box they'd erected over it. She'd never seen anything like it. Opera houses she'd seen, sure, with viewing boxes. Actual sports stadiums too. But never anything quite like this.

"He kind of looks like Nathan," Anne said. She was squinting down at the stage, trying to block the strobe lights with her hand. "You wouldn't know Nathan, he stopped coming around before you got involved. Cleo was sure he was about a year away from signing on with somebody, he had this killer EP he'd produced himself. Some of the guys think he just ditched us for the LA scene but I'm sure he didn't, he wouldn't have gone without saying anything—"

As they circled the hill above the mosh, Tess looked down into the heaving crowd and drew her arms up around herself, unnerved and unhappy and unsure why. Something about the figures below felt wrong, like furniture in a familiar house all moved slightly to the left, like the way the legs of a spider move.

"He would have at least told _me_ ," Anne said, "he never would have left without telling _me."_

"I don't think we're supposed to be here," Tess whispered, dashing to catch up from where she'd lagged behind.

"Did you think we jumped the fence for our health?" Anne said. "Come on, there's a space in front of that bleacher thing. We can get a good look from there."

The spectator's box glinted up at them, a pavilion of curtains and shadowy bodies mounted on strata just high enough to put it at the same height as the stage. It hovered over the sea of frothing bodies like a pirogue floating over the bayou.

"Indie artists are so flaky," Anne muttered, "I don't know what it is about them, one day they're vaping into a paper bag in your parent's basement and the next day they're just gone! No calls, no texts, not so much as a _hey thank you for the mix CD I really liked the black metal."_

As the hill dipped down into the bottom of the stadium, a hundred upraised, grasping hands lay at Tess's feet. She watched them, blue and purple in the relentless alien light, pumping their fists in time to a catastrophic breakdown. Some of their fingers seemed mashed and flattened, boneless against the dark. Digits seemed to flop from their knuckles. Tess did not want to go down into that mass.

"Must be a private event," Anne said, still shading her eyes as she peered through the gloom to the pavilion. "Probably some bougie wanna-be rockers with cash to burn. What do you think would happen if I just walked right in there? I could probably jump from the edge of this hill. Do you think they'd notice?"

"Anne," Tess said, "I don't like this. I think we should go."

"Where are you gonna go?" Anne said. "Bouncer's still out there."

"Couldn't we just," Tess said, "wait in the girl's room until it's over?"

"Yeah, Tess, that's where I wanna spend my friday night, in a trashed bathroom ten feet away from the actual show. Christ, it's like fifth grade all over again. Well I'm not missing out on the party because you're afraid of a ten dollar Target ouija board this time, so you can stay or you can make a break for it, but you're on your own."

Tess rapidly blinked away any water her eyes before it could think of becoming tears. It was fine, it was nothing to cry about, it was just—Anne being Anne. She didn't mean to be hurtful. It was just these new contact lenses irritating her eyes, that's what she would say…

"That _is_ Nathan!" Anne shouted, grabbing a fist full of Tess's shirt all at once and shaking her. "That rat! He got signed and he didn't tell me!"

Tess found herself being dragged forward by the collar, the hasty stitches down her sides popping and tearing against the force of it. As she stumbled down the hill, her feet seemed to touch the ground so little that it felt as if she was flying, or falling. They descended, coats whipping out behind them, and Tess thought for a moment that she met the eye of someone inside the pavilion—for a crystalline moment, a pair of eyes almost glowing with the lights from the stage, narrowed on her. And then they were down in the pit, with the rest of the crowd, looking up at Nathan's sunken face. It was hard to see what Anne found so interesting in him; his skin was drawn tight around his bones like paper around a frame, his knuckles clutching the microphone seemed like the segments of some sickly worm. Anne shrieked and waved up at him, doing her best to be heard over the deafening noise, but Tess drew back from the stage.

There was no security in sight. Bodies bumped and thumped into bodies, never quite crossing the invisible line between the front row and the bottom of the stage. There was no gate. As Tess turned back to find someone in the crowd who might stop and explain it to her, she found herself face to face with a man caught in the frothing, wide-eyed throes of an overdose, his eyes fixed on the stage above as he was bounced from shoulder to shoulder in the fray. He never fell. He only continued to surge forward and stagger back, blue in the face and white at the lips, his eyes as glassy as a corpse's, his hands reaching up, up—

Tess tore out of Anne's grip, almost clawing at the grass in her hurry to climb the hill again, like a child so frightened to climb the dark staircase that she went on all fours. She collapsed partway up, remembering Anne too late. She couldn't go back. She couldn't go forward. She scrambled up onto her back and drew her feet up to her chest, watching the crowd thrash below her in numb dread. Who were they? _What_ were they? In the flashing darkness she could just make out one jawless horror, skin blown back and glittering sticky with what had to be blood. At their head Anne was still shouting at the stage, jumping in time to the music as it coughed and howled. There was no rest for the band between melodies. They plunged forward without a pause for breath, or water, or tuning.

A persistent flash of motion at the edge of Tess's vision drew her finally away from the macabre scene before her. Inside the pavilion—now almost level with her again—a figure was beckoning her forward. He gestured to the gap between the hill and the banister, miming something like a leap across the gap. His almost uncannily high cheekbones and disturbingly mismatched eyes were fixed into an expression that was like the sharp interest of a child watching an insect, fingers already green with the guts of previous playmates.

Tess looked from the stage, to Anne bobbing furiously in the ghastly crowd, and finally back to the pavilion. What had shaken Tess down to her gut, Anne hadn't noticed and she hadn't cared. She wouldn't leave until she had gotten her answers. Her eye was always fixed on the next big thing, and tonight that thing was Nathan. Right now, Tess knew from dismal experience, she was a buzzing fly at the edge of Anne's vision. Maybe if Tess knew something, maybe if Tess could bring her something bigger and juicier than Nathan, she could lure Anne up away from that damn stage. It was the only option. Tess climbed to her knees and, with a breath so deep her chest ached, took a running leap at the edge of the pavilion.

The edge of the banister punched the wind out of her chest. As she scrabbled to pull herself over, eyes watering, the mismatched stranger only watched with delight. Tess slid to the floor of the pavilion, panting, and looked for the first time at the inside of the spectator's box. There were maybe a dozen people lounging across the array of furniture. The ones nearest her all watched surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes. There was something about their edges that made her uneasy.

"Interesting," said the one who had beckoned her over the gap, showing a set of pearly sharp-tipped teeth. "I don't believe _you_ were invited to the show."

Tess pushed herself up, a hand on the banister. "Sorry," she said, "it was Anne's idea. Sorry. We didn't realize it was a private event. Is this, like, your sweet sixteen?"

Even as she said it, she knew that couldn't be right. What kind of birthday party was full of scores of dying metal heads? The stranger wore a jacket that was something like a military dress uniform, a ragged punk-edged Frankenstein garment. In the middle of his other guests, filmy and insubstantial, he looked almost _too_ real.

"Cómo te llamas?"

She swallowed. "I'm Tess, uh, R," she said, as she always did, face hot with embarrassment. She was aware that no amount of fudging _Terrasa R _odriguez__ could make her name sound any less like an opening for another racist joke. She knew that, and she still insisted on doing it, just like she had since the first day she introduced herself to Anne Gwish - already beautiful and scathing long before she became the queen of the underground. By now it was habit.

"Bienvenido, Tess," the stranger said. "You can call me Pepito. What do you think of the show?"

She glanced back down at the pit, but only for a moment. She couldn't bear to look for any longer. "What's wrong with them?" she asked. "They all look like they're in pain. Some of them look like they'd keel right over if everyone else stopped shoving them around."

Pepito leaned over the banister, flashing eyes fixed on the world below. "I think rock'n roll is immortal, don't you?" he said. "It's a religion. It's got its pantheon of saints, its Kurt Cobains and its Janice Joplins. If you live fast and die young, you can live forever. Your friend gets it."

Tess followed the gaze, trying to spot whatever they were looking at, but all she could make out was the 27CLUB emblazoned across the drum set on stage. She shifted uncomfortably against the banister. "I'm sorry?" she said.

"Your friend," Pepito said, "she's very pretty. I bet she's one of those girls who thinks she's going places. She's bright, but not _too_ bright. Maybe not everyone likes her, but when she walks into the room, everyone makes a little more room for her."

"Uh," Tess said. "She's always been like that."

At the front of the crowd, Anne had stopped shouting for Nathan's attention. Now her hands reached up, as if in supplication, and she surged with the same urgent need as the rest of the crowd. Standing where she was at the head of them all, it was almost as if they were following _her_ , riding her tide against the unforgiving shore. Out of all of them, she was the only one perfectly whole, a queen among the legions.

"Out by twenty-five, dead or alive," Pepito remarked.

Tess looked down at the crowd. There was something too perfect about their synchronization, something inhuman in the rhythm of their surge. She was certain that if she could see Anne's eyes now, they would be as black and hollow as Nathan's.

"Why don't I feel it?" she said. "What's so special about me?"

"Special?" Pepito repeated, delighted. "There's nothing special about you! You're absolutely ordinary. Designated driver Tess. Boring, supportive, _ordinary_ Tess. That's why you can't make her see you. She's a star, and you're just a stage hand."

"I'm—sorry for interrupting," Tess said, swallowing an angry lump in her throat. She took a step back. "We need to go."

"Oh Tess, mi amiga. There's nowhere to go from here," Pepito said. "This is the cutting edge, Tess Uh R, the bleeding edge. She belongs here, with the legions of other fools who walk themselves down to the crossroads and make their deal with the devil. They dream of immortality."

"She can dream all she wants," Tess said, sharply, "but we're going."

"Humans sell their souls just to stand on the same blood-soaked hotel carpet as their dead idols," Pepito said, clicking his tongue. "Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are dying to join this party?"

"It doesn't seem like so many," Tess said, looking pointedly down at the pit.

"Well not everybody has what it takes," Pepito said, with a shrug. "You certainly don't."

Tess tightened her fists.

"Oh, no, don't be angry. It's not an insult. Why don't you stay a while," Pepito said, soothing now, voice softening. "Have a drink with us. Watch the show. You'll have something interesting to talk about when you go home, right? And with Anne gone, people will be looking for someone interesting to talk to. You know you don't _have_ to be a stage hand all your life, mi amiga. Have a drink with us."

As smoothly as a clockwork scene, a server passed just beyond them. Pepito reached out, lifting a single glass of champagne from the silver platter as it went. Not a drop spilled in his hand. No one seemed concerned that a boy younger than Tess was handling champagne so casually.

"Besides," Pepito added, "we both know you're too afraid to go back down there. You can't even walk home in the dark alone. You slept with the closet light on until you were sixteen. That's awfully old for such things."

Tess paused with her hand half way to the offered glass. What—what had she been doing? She snatched back her hand and retreated. "Thank you for having us," she gritted out, heels sliding across the floor. "Enjoy the rest of your party."

"She won't thank you for it!" Pepito remarked. "She doesn't even like you! A thing like her? She's incapable of real sentiment!"

Tess paused, one foot on the banister. She would have liked to turn and say, no, that was a lie. But the truth was, she didn't know. She was afraid that Pepito _was_ right. She was afraid of everything that lay below her, the clawing pit and the howling singers and Anne's dead black eyes. With another deep breath, Tess climbed over the banister and leapt down to the slope of the hill. I _am_ afraid, she thought, but if I just move fast enough—it's like the stairs, you have to climb them so fast that there's no time to think about it. You have to run.

Tess flew down the hill, down past the grasping hands of the pit, past the breakers that surged towards her, down to where Anne was. "Anne," she gasped, "we have to go, we have to—"

The moment she put her hands on Anne's arms, the crowd broke over her. Their bloodied and boneless and grasping hands closed around her, dragging her away from Anne, who was deaf to everything but the stage. Stitches pulled and snapped down the sides of her butchered t-shirt. Hands smeared their gore across her skin, endless fingers slimy with sweat, nails tacky with blood. Hairs all down her arms prickled under the chill ooze. She was afraid to try and pry them all off—if she let go of Anne, she was certain they would drag her back under before she could peel herself free.

"Anne!" she shouted, "listen to me, you know me!"

Anne didn't flinch. A heavy hand clutched at Tess's neck, fingers digging into her windpipe. She coughed.

"Anne Gwish," she said, "Look at me! God damn it, will you look at me for once in your life!"

Anne reached for the stage, her fingers grasping at the limelight, her eyes reflecting back the glittering darkness. She was gone, she was as surely gone as she had been when Chase Conner looked at her first the first time in eighth grade, with his new learner's permit and his acoustic guitar, and his mysterious high school savvy. They knew each other before the clove cigarettes and before the little club that was only open one night a week, before the secret cheerleading past that Tess has to pretend she doesn't know about. And still it seemed to mean nothing.

"Why am I never good enough for you!" Tess shouted, "I care about you, Anne, you idiot! Would you - would you rather die than let someone like me love you?"

Tess had never been enough to hold her back. She didn't even like folk metal! But she had pretended to, for an excuse to sit next to Anne on Friday nights in Dillon's basement. Tears burned her eyes as she dug her nails into Anne's arm. Why was nothing ever enough? Maybe Anne had grown up faster, but shouldn't Tess have caught up by now?

"Just tell me you want to stay!" Tess shouted. "If you tell me you want to stay I'll go! Just say something to me, anything, but at least have the decency to tell me goodbye!"

Her hand slipped open, just for a moment, but long enough for the clawing of the crowd to drag her back, their ruined but relentless fingers closing over her shoulders, drawing her back into the froth and ooze of bodies stuck as if forever in the moment of their deaths. She reached—her sweating fingers slipped—and Anne caught her, hand tight around wrist. Anne's face glowed in the light as she pulled, locking her grip and reeling Tess back out of the crowd, over the invisible line that kept the pit at bay. Tess fell into her arms as she finally broke free.

They stumbled back against the edge of the stage, where the thud of the drums rumbled straight through them. Anne said something, weak and lost in the wash of the music. In front of them, the pit threw itself against that invisible edge endlessly, maybe reaching for the two of them, maybe just reaching—

Tess took hold of Anne and ran, and did not look back. They crested the hill, passed the pavilion full of glittering, unblinking eyes, flew past the empty merch stand, and crashed into the ticketing area. Behind the booth, the bouncer turned his blank sunglasses to face them.

Tess froze on the threshold, with the howl of the stage behind her and the icy silence of the ticketing ahead. The bouncer sat perfectly still. His face was expressionless. Tess pulled her friend close against her side and walked slowly past the booth. He followed them like an owl, his head slowly turning, as if his eyes were pinned in place behind those glasses.

"Goodnight," Tess whispered to him, looking straight ahead until she couldn't see him anymore.

The street outside was silent and dark. Not even the relentless thump of the drums could be heard through the wall, which had nearly vibrated before. Her ears rang with the deafening quiet. At her heel, a playbill from last week's show skittered over the concrete, caught in the wind. She shivered, wondering if the bouncer was still watching them but too terrified to look back.

"Is it over?" Anne muttered, sounding as dry-mouthed and miserable as if she was caught in a brutal hangover. "Did we see the last set?"

Tess hesitated. "No," she said. "You weren't doing so good. We had to go."

"Oh," Anne said, screwing up her face. Her lids hung heavy again, shuttering over her eyes. Even sweaty and miserable and scowling, there was still something glittering about her. There was an irresistible pull to her, an undertow that Tess had been caught in for ten years. Soon, if she allowed it to, it would pull her under entirely, and everything that had been Terrasa Rodriguez would be lost in the world of Tess R forever.

"Let's get you home," she said, hauling Anne against her. "You're in no condition to go anywhere else."

Anne reached up clumsily, fingers bumping the skin below Tess's eye. Tess froze.

"You used to wear glasses," Anne said. "Why'd you stop wearing glasses?"

Tess felt herself soften, carefully closing her hand around Anne's. "You said they were lame."

Anne made a sound half like a snort and slumped against her side. Her heavy skirt flapped in the wind, the only sound on a silent street. "Did I say that?" she murmured.

"Two weeks ago," Tess said. "In the kitchen. You poured me a vodka cranberry."

Anne pulled back her fingers, gentle as the flutter of an insect's wings. Her black nails glinted as gold as her hair, a halo of frizzing edges against the street light. "Damn," she said, exhausted and vague. "I don't even know what I'm talking about on a _good_ day."

Anne shook her head. The playbill skittered away from their tired feet, twisted in the wind, and melted away into the night. "Okay," she said. "Let's go home."


End file.
